There are few people on earth who can find more ways around an interpersonal mulberry bush than I. While in the thick of my divorce from my first husband, my friend Kim Carter said something I’ve never forgotten and have shared with countless people since. We were enjoying a meal at a local restaurant in Kansas City, and I shared some of the undesirable experiences I was having. She listened intently and asked a few pointed questions. Then, the velvet hammer:
“Tara, you have the gift of mercy, and sometimes you overuse it.”
Damn! I remember how deeply understood I felt. In one sentence, Kim affirmed the light in me while illuminating the shadow on its underside. Her insight helped me process, then embrace, what it means to be a balanced human being—both kind and truthful, giving and discerning, loving but not limitlessly so.
Growing up, I always aimed to be “easy to love.” If I were easy, my father would make us all laugh. If I were easy, my mother’s life would be more peaceful. If I were easy, I would make more friends. If I were easy, my teachers would give me good marks on my report card. I was conditioned to go with other people’s flows, even if that meant silencing my voice and ignoring my own needs.
I got good at mirroring people’s goodness back to them, and I looked for myself in their judgments of me. Most of us have some degree of childhood trauma. For me, being easy to love was a trauma response to growing up with a volatile parent. I learned from Dr. Alduan Tartt, a friend and Christian psychologist based in Atlanta, that I was “fawning.”
Fawning is a term coined by psychotherapist Pete Walker. It describes a trauma response that we adopt to avoid conflict and establish safety, and develops from experiences related to complex PTSD, or from being in situations of interpersonal violence.
In researching fawning, I discovered there are seven primary behaviors involved:
- People-pleasing: Doing things for others to gain their approval or to make them like you
- Suppressing emotions: Denying your true feelings for fear they may not be honored or understood
- Difficulty setting boundaries: Having trouble establishing personal boundaries to protect yourself or your values
- Prioritizing others: Putting the needs of others before your own to preserve relationships
- Having trouble saying no: Struggling to say “no,” even when saying yes compromises you in some way
- Agreeing with others: Agreeing with others’ preferences to the exclusion of your own
- Holding yourself responsible: Holding yourself responsible for other people’s behaviors
The list read like a manual for my life. In talking with Dr. Tartt, I realized how misunderstood people-pleasing behaviors are. We talk about it as a personality trait, using phrases like “she’s a people pleaser” as a slur, meaning “she’s weak-minded.” But anyone who’s experienced trauma in any form knows it’s much more complicated. People pleasing is how we keep the peace. How we avoid magnifying discomfort and manage the perceived fragility of our attachments.
For me, breaking the chains of childhood and adult trauma would take years of effort, and I still have moments when I need reminding, but the transition from “easy” to independent marked the beginning of cutting to the front of my own lifeline—of putting me before other people’s needs and expectations…before their assessments and perceptions. Me, before the world.
It was when I first started asking the question: “What will happen if people get mad at me?” And accepting the truth in the answer: “you will not die.”
For every person who asks what “going along to get along” saves you instead of what it costs you, I invite you to ask again, and to sit with what comes up for you. I bet it costs more than you think.
Tara Jaye Frank
